Apologising for the issue, the bank said it was working to resolve it but it could not say how many customers have been affected.

"We continue to provide updates to customers across all our channels and we apologise for any inconvenience. We will have a further update shortly."

It is understood social welfare recipients are not affected and fees will not be applied to those who miss direct debits, etc.

Earlier angry customers took to Twitter to vent their frustration this morning.

However, the bank said it did not know how many customers had been affected or how long it would take to resolve the problems.

One Kildare-based customers said: "It's simply saying as soon as we have an update we’ll tweet here and I feel from having spoken to other people they’re just driving people around the bend because they haven’t given any indication of the scale the time the whole lot and it’s a Friday, people are wondering what’s going to be the state of play at the end of the day.

"If you go the 365 route and send them an e-mail I think you get a reply there that says we’ll be back to you in 72 hours, that’s how ridiculous the whole thing has got by way of communication with the banks, you can’t even ring your local branch anymore, you go to a call centre."